Thomas Colohan

Award-winning conductor Thomas Colohan has been the artistic director of the Washington Master Chorale since its founding in 2009. He has earned numerous honors, most recently winning a distinguished 2014 Artist Fellowship Grant from the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Colohan is active as a guest conductor, teacher, and clinician on both the east and west coasts. Recent engagements include leading Teatro Lirico DC’s 2014 production of Ponce de Leon’s Baroque Opera Venid, Venid Deidades, as well as regular invitations to guest conduct choral societies in Richmond, Williamsburg, and Washington, DC.

Before returning to Washington, Colohan served for eight years as director of choral activities and professor of voice at Santa Clara University, and for seven years as the music director of the Santa Clara Chorale. He has led choruses at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall, Washington National Cathedral, Prague’s Rudolphinum Concert Hall, and the Stephansdom in Vienna. His teachers have included renowned choral musicians such as Robert Shaw, Dale Warland, Morten Lauridsen, Helmut Rilling, Donald McCullough, William Dehning, and Daniel Moe.

A lyric baritone who maintains an active voice studio, Colohan has sung professionally with the Washington Bach Consort and on Public Television’s “Great Performances” series at the Kennedy Center with the Washington Opera Chorus. He holds a master’s of music in choral music from the University of Southern California and a bachelor’s of music in voice performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.